by Kevin OBrien on March 21st, 2013

YFS-VSA AXPONA 2013 SHOW REPORT


We are all back safe and mostly sound from Axpona 2013 and we have to say it was a great trip and an awesome show! Here's a 'thank you' to the city of Chicago and to Steve for putting on a great show. We have a feeling we'll be back next year for the great food, the great sounds, and the incredible gear. We also wanted to thank Albert and Damon Von Schweikert and the entire VSA family for giving us the opportunity to share the Othello Room.

The room sounded great and we can't thank VSA enough for an overall top-notch weekend. We don't want to forget to thank Joe Lavrencik from Critical Mass Systems for supplying the killer component stands in our room. A 'thank you' goes out to Shahin at EMM Labs as well. Thank you Shahin for getting us the EMM Labs DAC2X in time to get it integrated into our rack for the show. Everything sounded great!

We wanted to give our readers a glimpse of the Axpona '13 YFS-VSA component list. We figured posting it for you to see would be the easiest way to do this. Our line-up was incredible as far as the gear was concerned and the VSA VR-100XS speaker system was absolutely glorious! We were thankful for the opportunity to show our latest iteration of the YFS HD Ref-3 server, the Limited Edition. The LE version of our Ref-3 takes an already great source component and elevates it to a new level.

We keep everything the same as the Special Edition but implement an 8-core processor, our latest YFS DC power supplies, and our latest YFS Reference dual-headed USB interconnect. The DC linear power supplies can be seen in the photo above. They are the two silver boxes below the HD Ref-3 LE.

The YFS 12V DC power supply powers the SOtM USB PCI card and the YFS 5V DC power supply powers the USB power for the EMM Labs DAC2X via our new YFS dual-headed USB cable. See our EMM Labs DAC2X review for more info. We wanted to note that we were displaying a special new Master Built USB cable as well which uses Delphi Aerospace conductors. These conductors are identical to the rest of the Master Built Signature cable line conductors, hence the price.

We received some "Best of Show" awards from various reviewers so we know we're on the right track. We'd like to thank Myles Astor, Peter Breuninger, and all The Absolute Sound staff as well as the Stereophile staff for taking their time out to listen and give us their feedback. We'd also like to thank Greg Weaver, the senior editor over at Positive-Feedback who will be reviewing our HD Ref-3 SE this summer... Greg Weaver also gave us a "Best of Show" award for the Axpona event.

THANKS Guys!

The shot above shows the YFS-VSA team. Pictured from left to right: Brad Easton, Mike O'Brien, Kevin O'Brien, Albert Von Schweikert, and Damon Von Schweikert. Here's a link to VSA's Facebook page which has more info on the show awards, etc. that were given out for our Othello Room set up. And yes, we were part of the room although YFS was not mentioned specifically in the video. 

We hope to see you all at the next audio show... Until next time.

-YFS Design Team